Haki Yenu - It is your Right - GIZ

Access to Justice Project - “Haki Yenu”

“Haki Yenu” (It is your right in Ki-Swahili) is an ongoing study that is making a follow up on the survivors attended to at the centre to establish how many cases made it to the criminal justice system. The main goal of the study is to improve access to justice for survivors of sexual violence. It seeks to investigate and document the challenges that survivors encounter in accessing legal support and factors that contribute to the successful or failed prosecution of a SGBV case. Primarily, the study aims to investigate the legal outcomes and the reasons for successful or failed prosecutions of sexual offense cases filed at the Mombasa Law Courts and Children’s Court, and why survivors either filed or did not file their cases in court against the perpetrators. The study will also explore strategies for strengthening referrals from the community and between the medical and legal service providers, generate baseline data on legal follow up of sexual offence cases, and investigate the quality of services offered at the GBVRC.

This retrospective observational analysis will employ both qualita- tive and quantitative methods in its four major components:

Court records review-this involves a review of a sample of closed sexual offence files that were opened between August 2007 and December 2011.

Behavioral questionnaires will be administered to a sample of survivors on the register at the GBVRC that were seen within the same period.

In-depth-interviews will be conducted with 20 survivors who took their matter to court and 20 others who did not take their matter to court.

Key informant interviews will involve key stakeholders that are concerned in any way with SGBV. These include health care providers, magistrates, police investigators, police prosecutors, state counsels, government chemist analyst, prisons and probation officers, chiefs, village elders and women leaders.

The study started on 15th October 2012 and we hope to conclude by 31st May 2013.

Through the Haki Yenu a total of 24 communities based paralegals have trained on GBV Prevention and response. A mapping exercise of GBV service providers was also conducted. The paralegals are an important avenue for linking the community to services being provided at the GBVRC hence strengthening referrals and access to services, including access to justice. Another group of 19 paralegals were trained by ICRHK on behalf of Action Aid. 2 community forums were also held with community leaders from Changamwe and Kilifi.

We are grateful for the material, technical and financial support that we received from our stakeholders in 2012 not forgetting our donors Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), UNFPA and the donations received from Ghent. We also appreciate the support we have received from other donors in the previous years- DANIDA, UNFPA, Open Society Initiative of East Africa (OSIEA) and Planned Parenthood Federation of America- In- ternational (PPFA-I). We are looking forward to even greater things in 2013